Wow, I didn't even know about the Intercept, let alone that podcast. Jeremy Scahill is the real deal. I followed him throughout the Bush years, on Blackwater and other topics. We need him now more than ever.

The editing is absolutely brilliant. Fascinating characters. Twists. Reminds you that things are always more complicated than they seem.

More than anything, the protagonist of the story (who drew the producers into it) is a delightful, eccentric human being and a joy to listen to.

I agree. I was turned off by the ads for S-Town, but I think it's definitely better than Serial (the first season of which I loved).

In other podcast news: My Podcast group, "Victrola" is one of three national finalists in the Contest4Improv4Humans contest. I'm not getting my hopes up or anything, but it would be pretty cool if we won.

It's been a year since we wrapped up my X-Files podcast and I'm getting antsy to start doing it all over again. I have an idea for a film podcast and wondered if there were any other Xixaxers that'd be interested in partnering with me?

My ConceptMust Watch Movies - greatest movies all of time usual suspects, past/recent Oscar Best Picture winners, favorite films that had a huge impact on our lives personally - each episode we have an in-depth discussion of a single film. That's it.

Lessons LearnedDoing XPTXF was a lot of work even though I knew the source material really well going in. Because of that, time-wise, I'm thinking this new podcast would only publish once every other week. And since the discussions don't need to be particularly topical, we could have a bunch in hand before we start putting them out there. The other thing that I realized was that there is a cost to publish your stuff. I tried to do everything as cheaply as possible, but for the last few months I was paying $25+ to host my files on Amazon S3. That may not sound like much, but it adds up quickly. But at the time it seemed like the best solution, knowing that the show would only have a limited lifespan. Anyway, the money factor is why you can no longer download the show through a podcast app, it's currently only publicly accessible on YouTube. The good news, however, is that in the past 12 months, Podbean has introduced a $108/yr. plan for unlimited audio files + bandwidth, which is much more reasonable - especially if split between 2 or 3 people.

Can a podcast make money?Apparently they can. I tried with XPTXF. I enrolled in Amazon's affiliates program and earned a whopping $2, then got kicked out of the program because I wasn't publishing enough new content on my website. So I set up a Paypal button and asked for donations. I got $40 total. Part of my overall goal in doing a new podcast is to make a return on it. At an absolute minimum, the podcast should be financially self-sustaining. Which at $108/yr. seems entirely feasible. Preferably, I'd like to make some decent beer money - or more. I've been looking at things like Patreon and thinking about how I could tie in a podcast with my other creative outlets (short story writing, film essays, etc.) and I'm still noodling with some ideas. Whether that approach might work with a team podcast, I don't know. But an easy way does exist through Podbean's own Patron program. I still need to look into the specifics further, but it seems a good approach may be to have a bi-weekly podcast offered for free to the masses, with the option to sign up as a patron and get rewarded with a bonus episode each month as thanks.

So who's in?Bueller...? Okay, so all of this is a lot to take in. I probably wrote too much, but I wanted to give a full sense of where my head is at with this at the moment. There's still a lot to be worked out. A few of you have expressed interest in doing something like this in the past, and a couple of us even tried it once or twice. Now I've done it, I feel like I understand the best plan of attack and what works and what doesn't. So here's what I'm looking for: ideally 2 co-hosts who can commit to doing this on an ongoing basis with me. Not saying we're going to record every two weeks without fail, because life comes up (in which case it's the perfect opportunity for a guest to join in the fun) but looking for people who will be committed. Also would love to have people who I can bounce ideas off about how to make this profitable - whether that's simply for the podcast, or for each of us in our additional extracurricular creative endeavors. Have a think and reach out if you're at all interested. We'll chat. Cheers.

This sounds exciting! I would volunteer, but I don't enjoy talking enough to do a podcast, and I'm too busy these days.

If you're looking for inspiration, I highly recommend the Slash Film podcast. They have a breezy approach but take movies seriously. They also have 3 hosts, which seems to be an ideal number.

Anyway, there are plenty of podcasts that publish every other week, so don't feel bad about that. As a listener, I would rather have a podcast come out on that schedule than have the creators push themselves to publish every week and get burned out.